Daily Archives: August, 31, 2011

There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that the divider in Chief purposefully chose to give his pointless jobs speech on the same day as the Republican debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California. Everything the man does lately seems designed to chafe and offend. To deflect blame away from themselves, the White House is claiming that they got permission from Speaker Boehner’s office before they announced the timing of the speech. Boehner says they didn’t.

Incidentally, is there any good reason for the President to be giving yet another long, droning, platitudinous speech, transparently short on specifics, long on demagoguery? His handlers have gotten it into their heads that giving speeches is one of Obama’s strong suits. So they keep trotting him out there, even though his powers of persuasion ended a long time ago. The more he talks, the more his approval numbers go down.I don’t have a problem with them being behind the learning curve on this, but kneecapping Rick Perry on the night of his first primary debate, is nasty and petty.

“It is my recommendation that your address be held on the following evening, when we can ensure there will be no parliamentary or logistical impediments that might detract from your remarks,” Boehner wrote.

Boehner’s spokesman added in a statement that the White House ignored protocol by not first requesting a date from the speaker’s office.

“It’s unfortunate the White House ignored decades — if not centuries — of the protocol of working out a mutually agreeable date and time before making any public announcement,” Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck said.

The White House sprang the speech on such short notice, even some Democrats are questioning the wisdom of the approach.Reportedly, one top Senate Democratic aide called the move “pure Obama — keeping us in the dark until the last minute.” Another one thinks the White House miscalculated; “The narrative about the jobs speech has now become about when the speech is given, not the substance of the speech.”

So how does the “adult in the room” respond to Republican objections to the WH faux pas?

A senior House Democratic aide called Boehner’s office “childish” for asking the president to reschedule.

“The childish behavior coming out of the speaker’s office today is truly historic,” the aide said. “It is unprecedented to reject the date that a president wants to address a joint session of the Congress.”

The White House had insisted the timing was coincidental. Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters there were many scheduling “considerations” and suggested the president has no interest in detracting from the debate viewership.

He said the administration would “welcome” a decision by debate hosts to “adjust the timing of their debate so that it didn’t conflict.”

Some White House officials, not brave enough to go on the record, accused Boehner of lying:

Senior White House officials, responding to Boehner’s letter under cloak of anonymity, told POLITICO the speaker had essentially signed off on the 8 p.m., Sept. 7 slot before they went public.

“[The] date and time were cleared with the speaker’s office this morning, before the letter went out,” an Obama aide said.

Again, Boehner claims theydidnot clear it with his office, first. He says the White House “notified” himthey were seeking that time, then announced it to the press, before Boehner had answered. What weasels.

On the Senate side, Jim DeMint is fuming, vowing to block Obama’s speech unless he knocks it off:

Sen. Jim DeMint vowed Wednesday to try to block President Barack Obama from addressing a joint session of Congress on the same day as a Republican presidential debate next week.

Obama could learn something from the GOP, DeMint reasoned, in adding his voice — and his vote — to a growing chorus of Republican objections.

“The president should pick another night. I’m planning to watch the Republican primary debate … and the president should watch it, too,”

The iconic South Carolina conservative said. “If he has a jobs proposal, put it in writing, give us a cost estimate, and send it over. I want to read the bill, not listen to talking points off a TelePrompter. If he insists on playing politics by picking the night of the GOP debate, I will object to the session.”

A lone determined senator can tie the chamber in knots for days, and the House and Senate must both pass a concurrent resolution to allow for the president to speak to a joint session.

Mark Levin says he hears Obama may just do an Oval Office address if Congress balks. This could work for him. It was speculated the whole point of calling a Joint Session was to force networks to cover him. And they are getting tired of giving him very pricey prime-time slots to speak in. But a Joint Session is fairly rare and networks wouldn’t balk for that kind of speech.

President Obama is preparing to fight a political war this fall on two fronts — the first against Republicans who want his job and the second against Republicans who want to make his job more difficult.

Obama is taking dead-aim at the latter group, targeting Congress in a fall offensive that the president’s reelection campaign hopes will bruise the overall GOP image beyond repair.

Well, he’s getting off to a bang-up start, annoying even members of his own party with his nonsense.

A good catch by New Yorker correspondent Ryan Lizza. Note in Carney’s statement that they’re now saying they merely “consulted” with Boehner’s office beforehand. Says Lizza, “‘Cleared’ officially downgraded to ‘consulted.’ So someone at WH anonymously passed along inaccurate information to several journos. Nice.”

Within minutes of agreeing with congressional leaders Wednesday night on an address to a joint session next week, President Obama flashed out an email to millions of supporters criticizing the chambers, their members and vowing to pressure them to enact his as yet unspecified job creation ideas.

“It’s been a long time since Congress was focused on what the American people need them to be focused on,” the Democrat charged in an email with the subject line: “Frustrated.”

It’s not exactly clear how long “a long time” Obama was thinking of. But until midterm voters produced a historic House turnover to Republicans last November, Obama’s Democratic Party controlled both houses with substantial majorities and gave him vast spending, reform and healthcare programs.

It was, at least in part, voter reaction to such legislation that produced the divided government in D.C. now.

This evening’s email is likely revealing of the strategy this White House intends to follow for the 2012 presidential election, blaming Congress for what hasn’t happened in the economy and employment sectors.

Like this:

Obama sold the San Francisco solar company, Solyndra as the future of Green technology, “leading the way”, “a testament to American ingenuity and dynamism”. In late 2009, Solyndra received a loan guarantee of $535 million via the Department of Energy’s “Section 1705 program” created by the 2009 stimulus.

President Obama faces political catastrophe in the form of Solyndra — a San Francisco Bay area solar company that he touted as a gleaming example of green technology. It has announced it will declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy. More than 1,100 people will lose their jobs.

During a visit to the Fremont facility in spring of 2010, the President said the factory “is just a testament to American ingenuity and dynamism and the fact that we continue to have the best universities in the world, the best technology in the world, and most importantly the best workers in the world. ”

It’s not his statements the administration will regret; it’s the loan guarantees. The President was celebrating $535 million in federal promises from the Department of Energy to the solar startup. The administration didn’t do its due diligence, says the Government Accountability Office. “There’s a consequence if you don’t follow a rigorous process that’s transparent,” Franklin Rusco of GAO told the website iWatch News.

In addition to Solyndra’s financial troubles, the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee was piqued by the possibility that the solar company’s loan guarantee had been influenced by politics. As has beenreportedby ABC News and iWatch News, Solyndra’s primary financial backer was a “bundler” (i.e., big-time fundraiser) for then-Senator Barack Obama’s Presidential campaign.Also suspicious is the timing of Solyndra’s loan guarantee. It was closed 10 months before the next such loan guarantee; in the ten months thereafter, 10 loan guarantee were closed. It certainly seems as if the Solyndra loan guarantee was rushed out the door. The Subcommittee would like to know why.In January, the Subcommittee opened its investigation. On March 14, it requested documentation on the loan guarantee from the Office of Management and Budget, which has an oversight role with regard to the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, but OMB has refused to produce the documents. The subcommittee convened a hearing June 24 to hear directly from OMB Deputy Director Jeffrey Zients, but he refused to show up to testify.

Question for Issa: What’s the use of having subpoena power if no one honors your requests?

Last year, Seattle was awarded $20 million in stimulus funds to weatherize buildings. Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn promised that the money would improve energy efficiency in 200 buildings (in practice, this means calking and insulating), thereby creating 2,000 “green jobs.” This proved to be a gross overestimate. Two weeks ago, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer called the program a “bust.” The newspaper reported that a scant 14 jobs have been created, most of which were administration.

According to a recent New York Times article on the failure of President Barack Obama’s green jobs agenda, California has spent half of $186 million in stimulus money it received for weatherization programs. The money created a paltry 538 full time jobs, at a cost of almost $173,000 per job. What a crummy deal!

Then there’s Evergreen Solar, a solar-power components manufacturer. In April 2009, the White House issued a press-release stating that stimulus money* resulted in Evergreen Solar seeking to fill 90-100 jobs at a plant in Devens, Massachusetts. A year later, Evergreen Solar packed up its bags and moved operations to China. This month, it declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Obama’s uncle Omar,” Onyango Obama, (also known as, Obama Onyango), who was arrested last week in Framingham, MA, last week, was ordered to be deported in 1992, according to two federal law enforcement officials with knowledge of the case. Despite his illegal status, Uncle Obama has a valid MA drivers license and a federal SS.

Onyango Obama, who is from Kenya and is known as the president’s Uncle Omar on his father’s side, had lived a quiet life in Massachusetts until last Wednesday, when police said the car he was driving darted in front of a police cruiser, nearly causing the officer to hit his car.

The federal officials, who spoke about Obama’s immigration status on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak about the case, said Obama had been told to leave in 1992, but he did not go.

Obama is the second relative of the president to have defied a deportation order, reigniting debate over illegal immigration and raising questions about how a man who had lived in the United States illegally for years had managed to secure a job, a Massachusetts driver’s license, and apparently, a federal Social Security number, without being detected by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

“There are hundreds of thousands of people who have been ordered deported and just ran off and nobody’s looking for them,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors strict controls on immigration.

Onyango Obama’s sister, Zeituni Onyango, also faced deportation before a Boston immigration judge granted her asylum last year. She, too, had avoided the spotlight, living in public housing in South Boston despite a deportation order. Her immigration status was leaked to the media days before her nephew’s historic election in 2008.

Here’s Sean Hannity discussing the strange story on his show, last night.

Local CBS affiliate WBZ reported that Aunt Zeituni and Uncle Omar are brother and sister.

Like this:

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) appeared on the Greta Van Susteren Show last night to talk about the House Oversight Committee’s investigation of the gunwalker scandal.

Video via Gateway Pundit:

“We have confidential sources that have shown us why the administration’s representatives knew these weapons were going to the cartels. Not mostly, not maybe, but virtually all of them.”

Is Issa really so naive that he thinks a conference call or meeting with Holder is going to lead to “a satisfactory conclusion” to this investigation? It’s past time for an independent prosecutor to the case.